The Declaration of Arbroath 1320 by John PrebbleThe Declaration of Arbroath was and has been unequalled in its eloquent plea for
the liberty of man. From the darkness of medieval minds it shone a torch upon future
struggles which its signatories could not have foreseen or understood.The author of this
noble Latin address is unknown, though it is assumed to have been composed by Bernard de
Linton, Abbot of Arbroath and Chancellor of Scotland. Above the seals of eight earls and
forty-five barons, it asked for the Pope's dispassionate intervention in the bloody
quarrel between the Scots and the English, and so that he might understand the difference
between the two its preamble gave him a brief history of the former. The laughable fiction
of this is irrelevant. What is important is the passionate sincerity of the men who
believed it, who were placing a new and heady nationalism above the feudal obligations
that had divided their loyalties less than a quarter of a century before. In its mixture
of defiance and supplication, nonsensical history and noble thought, two things make the
Declaration of Arbroath the most important document in Scottish history. Firstly it set
the will and the wishes of the people above the King. Though they were bound to him 'both
by law and by his merits' it was so that their freedom might be maintained. If he betrayed
them he would be removed and replaced. This remarkable obligation placed upon a feudal
monarch by his feudal subjects may be explained in part by the fact that Bruce was still a
heather king to many of them, still a wild claimant ruling upon sufferance and success.
But the roots of his kingship were Celtic, and a Celtic tradition was here invoked, the
memory of the Seven Earls, the Seven Sons of Cruithne the Pict in who, it was believed,
had rested the ancient right of tanistry, the elevation of kings by selection. This unique
relationship of king and people would influence their history henceforward, and would
reach its climax in the Reformation and the century following, when a people's Church
would declare and maintain its superiority over earthly crowns. Secondly, the manifesto
affirmed the nation's independence in a way no battle could, and justified it with a truth
that is beyond nation and race. Man has a right to freedom and a duty to defend it with
his life. The natural qualifications put upon this by a medieval baron are irrelevant, as
are the reservations which slave-owning Americans placed upon their declaration of
independence. The truth once spoken cannot be checked, the seed once planted controls its
own growth, and the liberty which men secure for themselves must be given by them to
others, or it will be taken as they took it. Freedom is a hardy plant and must flower in
equality and brotherhood.

Letter from Arbroath - A translation by
Agnus Mure MacKenzie

To our Lord and Very Holy Father in Christ,
Lord John, the Supreme Pontiff, by God’s Providence, of the Most Holy
Roman and Catholic Church, his humble and devoted sons here follow the
names of the Nobles and Commons in Parliament assembled and other barons
and freeholders, with the whole Commons of the Kingdom of Scotland. With
all filial reverence devoutly do we kiss your blessed feet.

From the deeds alike and the books of our
forefathers, we understand, Most Holy Lord and Father. that among other
noble nations our own, the Scottish, grows famous for many men of wide
renown. The which Scottish nation, journeying from Greater Scythia by the
Tyrrhene Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, could not in any place or time
or manner be overcome by the barbarians, though long dwelling in Spain
among the fiercest of them. Coming thence, twelve hundred years after the
transit of Israel, with many victories and many toils they won that
habitation in the West, which though the Britons have been driven out, the
Picts effaced, and the Norwegians, Danes and English have often assailed
it, they hold now, in freedom from all vassalage; and as the old
historians bear witness, have ever so held it. In this kingdom have
reigned a hundred and thirteen kings of their own Blood Royal, and no man
foreign has been among them. Of their merits and their noble qualities we
need say no more, for they are bright enough by this alone, that though
they were placed in the furthest ends of the earth, Our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who is the King of’ Kings. called them among the first to His most firm
faith, after His Passion and Resurrection. Nor did He choose to confirm
them in the Lord’s Faith by any one less than His own first Apostle
(although he stands second or third in order of rank) the most gracious
Andrew, brother of Peter’s self, whom ever since He has established
their Patron.

Bearing all these things carefully in mind,
those holiest of fathers, your predecessors, adorned and fortified this
kingdom and people, as belonging especially to Peter’s brother, with
many favours and many privileges. Thus our nation till now has lived under
their protection in peace and quiet, till the Magnificent Prince, Edward
King of the English, the father of the Edward that now is, did, under
cover of alliance and friendship, invade and occupy as an enemy our
kingdom and people, who then had no head, who had in mind no evil towards
him, and who then were unused to war or sudden invasion. What that king
has done in wrongs and slaughter and violence, in imprisonings of the
leaders of the Church, in burning and looting of religious houses and the
massacres of their communities, with his other outrages on the Scottish
people (sparing nor sex nor age nor priestly orders) is something that is
not to be comprehended save by those who know these things from their own
experience.

Yet, at last, by His help Who heals and
sains the wounded, we are freed from these innumerable evils by our most
valiant Sovereign, King, and Lord, King Robert, who to set free his
heritage and his people faced, like a new Maccabeus or Joshua, with joyful
heart, toil, weariness, hardship, and dangers. By the Providence of God,
the right of succession, those laws and customs which we are resolved to
defend even with our lives, and by our own just consent, he is our King:
and to him who has brought salvation to his people through the
safeguarding of our liberties, as much by his own deserving as by his own
rights, we hold and choose in all things to adhere. Yet Robert himself,
should he turn aside from the task that he has begun, and yield Scotland
or us to the English King and people, we should cast out as the enemy of
us all, as subverter of our rights and of his own, and should choose
another king to defend our freedom: for so long as a hundred of us are
left alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion. We fight
not for glory nor for wealth nor honours; but only and alone we fight for
freedom, which no good man surrenders but with his life.

Because of these things, most reverend
Father and Lord, praying earnestly from our hearts that before Him as
Whose Vicar on Earth you reign, before Him to Whom there is but a single
weight, Who has but one law for Jew and Greek and for Scots and English
— before Him will with honesty consider the manifest anguish and
tribulation which we and the Church have suffered through the English, and
will look upon us with a father’s eyes. We pray you to admonish this
King of England (to whom his own possessions may well suffice, since
England of old was enough for seven kings or more) that he should leave us
in peace in our little Scotland, since we desire no more than is our own,
and have no dwelling place beyond our own borders: and we on our part, for
the sake of peace, are willing to do all within our power.

Most Holy Father, it is your part to do
this, or surrender to the barbarity of the heathen, let loose for the sins
of Christians on the Faithful, and daily forcing the bounds of
Christendom, and you know it would mar the security of your fame if you
looked unmoved on anything which in your time should bring dishonour on
any part of the Church. May your Holiness therefore admonish those
Christian princes who falsely claim that their own wars with their
neighbours now hinder them from relieving the Holy Land: though indeed
they are hindered only by their belief that they will find more profit and
less toil in crushing neighbours smaller than themselves, who appear to
them also weaker than themselves. He Who knows all knows that if the King
of the English would leave us in peace, we and our own Lord King would go
joyfully thither: which thing we solemnly testify and declare to the Vicar
of Christ and to all Christian people. But if too readily, or insincerely,
you put your faith in what the English have told you, and continue to
favour them, to our confounding, then indeed shall the slaying of bodies,
yea and of souls, and all those evils which they shall do to us, or we to
them, be charged to your account by the Most High.

We are always bound to you, as God’s
Viceregent, to please you by a son’s obedience in all things. We remit
our cause to the Highest King and Judge, casting our care on Him, in the
hope and faith that He will grant to us both strength and valour, and
bring about our enemies’ overthrow.

May the Most High preserve for many years Your
Serene Highness to His Holy Church.

Given at the Monastery of Arbroath in
Scotland the sixth day of April in the year of Grace one thousand three
hundred and twenty, and in the fifteenth year of the King named above.

The Past as Propaganda in The Declaration of ArbroathBy Professor Alexander Brodie FRSE. 18
November 2010

The Declaration of Arbroath
(1320), the most famous document in Scottish history, is a letter to Pope
John XXII that maps out Scotland's history, and uses that history as
propaganda on behalf of a request about the Scottish throne. The largely
fanciful history presents the Scots as a chosen people, protected, at Jesus'
behest, by St Andrew, and it compares Robert the Bruce to Joshua and Judas
Maccabeus. It will be argued that, aside from the fantasy, there is also a
powerful and persuasive intellectual underpinning to the Declaration, one
closely associated with Scotland's greatest medieval thinker, John Duns
Scotus.

Alexander Broadie FRSE is Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at Glasgow
University. He is the author of fifteen books, the majority on Scottish
intellectual history. His most recent book A History of Scottish Philosophy
(Edinburgh University Press: revised edition 2010) was the Saltire Society
Scottish History Book of the Year, 2009.

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